I was warning about this a few weeks ago, but Stagecoach South have taken a butchers knife to the services in Basingstoke and have made substantial cuts to it’s services from two weeks time. Now some might say, that sunshine follows thunder; and we can only hope that the substantial staff shortages that Basingstoke particularly is affected by will pass soon enough. They have made preparations with probably as much forewarning as they could, with timetables released within 48 hours of the registrations appearing on the Traffic Commissioners register.
When you consider though, that nearby Andover has not really had a very substantial change to it’s timetable in a while, Basingstoke must be feeling the pressure considerably. We can be thankful that none of our local depots in Stagecoach South were included in the pay and conditions strike action that affected other parts of the Stagecoach Group as well.
The service reductions are not exclusive to Basingstoke either. Not a month after Stagecoach took over large parts of the Arriva network across Guildford and Woking, service cuts were announced because of staff shortages. All spare bus driving licence holders in the management team across South were even convinced to go for a drive on the patch as well, from what I understand.
Changes to Town Services
It should be noted that in the main, many of these services interwork at the moment. This is probably the reasoning between making changes to these services at the same time. Where Sunday services are not mentioned, these do not change from the current timetable.
Please remember that after the evening rush hour, these frequencies reduce.
- Service 1 between the Railway Station, Winchester Road and Brighton Hill:
* Service remains Every 15 Minutes weekdays but with minor changes
* Service will run Every 15 Minutes on Saturdays - Service 3 between the Railway Station, Worting Road and South Ham
* Service will run Every 30 Minutes Monday to Sunday (check if travelling before 9am weekdays) - Service 5 between the Bus Station, Oakridge and West Popley
* Service will run Every 20 Minutes Monday to Friday
* Service will run Every 30 Minutes Saturday - Service 6 between Winklebury, Houndmills, Town Centre, Oakridge and East Popley
* Service remains Every 15 Minutes weekdays but with minor changes
* Service will run Every 15 Minutes on Saturdays - Service 7 between the Town Centre, Daneshill and Chineham
* Service will run Every 30 Minutes Monday to Sunday - Service 8 between the Railway Station, Buckskin, Hatch Warren and Beggarwood
* Service will run Every 30 Minutes Monday to Sunday
Now I did….
…. suggest with one of those slightly tongue-in-cheek tweets, that Boris removing work from home orders, reducing isolation periods for the fully vaccinated, and the like might change the direction of things. Even the slow cuts to isolation periods have not really affected the staffing levels though, so we might be seeing this level of service for a number of weeks, if not longer.
Speaking of which, it is 3am here as I write this – time for me to scrape the back of my nostrils again.